This isn’t about the Bears, but it does have a hilarious tale of door mismeasurement, please read it

One of the pitfalls of the modern internet age with its Meta Insights and Google Analytics is that once you know exactly how many people are reading each story, it’s really tempting to steer news coverage away from what’s actually news toward what will draw the most eyeballs. I can tell you, for example, that any story about the Chicago Bears is going to about boast at least double the number of readers as one about minor-league baseball — whether just mentioning the Bears in a headline and the opening paragraph does the trick, we’re about to find out.

Anyway, this is a story about minor-league baseball, but 1) it’s about the Worcester Red Sox stadium that is costing a minor-league record $150 million while the housing that was supposed to pay for it is scaled back and the whole thing looks like a giant shipping container and is poorly designed in its details, and 2) it features a math error worthy of Spinal Tap and NASA, so you’ll want to read this. No, don’t go wandering off to check NFL scores of teams like the Bears and Bills and (what other teams get a lot of clicks, oh right) Cowboys, stay right here, you won’t be sorry.

The story begins in an article in the Worcester Telegram about why Polar Park isn’t hosting any of the concerts the city had planned for it (if you can’t get around the paywall, Worcester Sucks and I Love It writer Bill Shaner has helpfully tweeted screenshots):

According to “Ballpark Project Fast Facts,” a document posted to the city’s website in summer 2018 that has since been removed, Polar Park “will” host “at least” 125 events per year, including 68 baseball games, “large-scale” events/concerts, road races, collegiate/high school sporting events, fireworks and other community events.

With the second season of the WooSox now finished, there has yet to be a single “large-scale” concert at the park, as originally promised…

“Polar Park replicated Fenway Park to some degree. And in Fenway Park, the only way to get to the center of the park is through a rolled-up doorway at center field that you can drive a vehicle into but, unfortunately, that is only 12 feet high, and large trucks that carry concert production are always 13 feet high or so,” [Worcester Tercentennial Celebration Committee technical consultant Jon] Rosbrook said. “So, consequently, at Fenway Park, all the big equipment stays outside on Lansdowne Street and is either lifted by crane over the Green Monster onto the field, or small pieces can be put onto smaller trucks that can be pulled through that doorway and then unloaded closer to the stage.”

There are other problems with hosting concerts at the ballpark — for one thing, because so much of its 9,508-seat capacity is on the outfield berm, which would be behind the stage, and limited fire exits for seating on the field, concerts there could only hold about 6,000, which is less than most major concert acts would want. But it’s the door mismeasurement thing that is hilarious, because apparently nobody bothered to check this during design and construction, and now it’s built in to a major part of the stadium structure:

And also because Edward Augustus Jr., who as city manager took charge of building this thing, is now downplaying the door issue as something that can easily be fixed, by, I’m not sure, maybe bending the fabric of space-time?

“I heard about the issue about the height thing. I definitely heard about that. Anything can be fixed or resolved. So I can’t imagine that’s a permanent problem. Something needs to be adjusted there. It should be adjusted,” Augustus said.

No, anything can’t be fixed! That’s the Second Law of Thermodynamics!

Anyway, not being able to hold dozens of concerts a year at the WooSox’ park is probably not that huge a deal given that no minor-league parks actually host dozens of concerts a year, but it is a reminder that promises of future events that a stadium will bring should be taken with an enormous grain of salt. And that’s about it, unless … sorry, are you feeling bait-and-switched by all those Bears mentions? Would you feel better if this post had something about the Bears, even if it was trivial, like Freedom of Information Act requests turning up exactly when in 2021 the Bears and Arlington Heights officials first started discussing moving the Bears to the suburbs? Nope, sorry, nothing here about that, this just isn’t that kind of article, go elsewhere for SEO tricks designed to lure you in with mentions of the Bears, Chicago, and the Chicago Bears. Oh, and Soldier Field, that too.